"Go ye therefore and teach all nations . . ." Matthew 28:19

Monday, December 14, 2015

So there is a recent convert who lives in Texas but grew up in Québec and he's visiting for the holidays so after emails last week we met him in Trois Pistoles which is a city about 40 minutes away, because he lives an hour and a half away. So anyways he's 25 and speaks perfect English because he has lived in the U.S. going to school for the past 4 ish years. It was so nice to talk to someone near our age, who is a member of the church, in English. Love the Québecois but English is great. English class in LR was great. One of our members who lives in La Rédemption planned the activity which was a fill in the blank for a song off of Michael Bublé's Christmas CD. It was so nice to listen to Michael Bublé Christmas songs because French hymns and French versions of Christmas songs aren't the same. Haha.

We had a good week of lessons. We met with several of our members and with our investigator Kathleen and shared the Christmas video and talked about the birth of Christ. There is a powerful Spirit that is present when talking about the birth of Christ. It's amazing!! Our member André, Kathleen's father, is hilarious!! So as a joke he hacked into Kathleen's laptop and changed the desktop picture to this picture.

While laughing at the picture, he said to Kathleen, "You look so much like your mother." Now, ordinarily this wouldn't be funny, but because Kathleen's parents are divorced I thought it was pretty funny. Haha.

Chantale needed another blessing this week because she has an ear infection and she can't hear at all because she's completely deaf in her other ear. In any event, it was giving her a lot of pain so she called us. Giving blessings is fantastic. It's stressful in another language but it's worth it to see people being blessed almost immediately. On Friday we went back to La Rédemption because one of our members needed help finishing the framing around his patio door. It took us a good 4 hours but it was so fun to learn things about carpentry and they fed us lunch and dinner which is always a bonus! Saturday we went back to Trois Pistoles to meet with Marc again and he brought one of his friends. In the space of a few hours talking together we taught his friend the first two lessons and had a scriptural based lesson with Marc. Marc could not have come at a better time. It took so much stress off of me to be able to talk to people my age who are open to the Gospel.

Preparing for a talk in French

Sunday was great too. Elder Shaw and I had the privilege of speaking in church. I spoke on "The Parable of the Sower" by Dallin H. Oaks from General Conference in April. Elder Oaks taught about 3 of the types of ground. The stony ground, thorny ground, and the good ground that brought forth fruit. For the stony ground he talked about how important it is for us as members to help recent converts, investigators, and even members because the stony ground is they who accept the Gospel readily and excitedly but when trials arise they lose their faith and fall away. Elder Oaks talked about how we as members need to do everything we can to strengthen one another and to support one another. The thorny ground represent those who are caught up in the pleasures and distractions of the world. He talked about how we need to focus less on the worldly things like games on our phones, sports games, and things like that and spend more time with our families, serving others, and doing the simple things to increase our faith. He ended by talking about how our goal should be to be the good ground bringing forth good fruit.

I love you all and hope you all have a great and safe week, that you remember the Savior as Christmas quickly approaches and that you seek for ways to serve others. I know that if we sincerely have a desire to help someone, Heavenly Father will place people in our paths.